Views From Kennewick

Friday, June 22, 2007

Grounded in Fantasy

By Caroline B. Glick

WHY are Bush and Olmert set to embrace Fatah and Abbas today? Why are they abjectly refusing to come to terms with the strategic reality of the Iranian-Syrian onslaught? Why are they insisting that the establishment of a Palestinian state is their strategic goal and doing everything they can to pretend that their goal has not been repeatedly proven absurd?

Iran and its client state Syria have a strategic vision for the Middle East. They wish to take over Lebanon. They wish to destroy Israel. They wish to defeat the US in Iraq. They wish to drive the US and NATO from Afghanistan. They wish to dominate the region by driving the rest of the Arab world to its jihad-supporting knees. Then they wish to apply their vision to the rest of the world.

Today, Syria and Iran are ardently advancing their strategic vision for the world through a deliberate strategy of victory by a thousand cuts. Last week's Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip; Sunday's reopening of the Lebanese front against Israel with the Syrian-ordered rocket attacks on KiryatShemona; the now five-week old Syrian ordered low-intensity warfare against Lebanon's pro-Western Siniora government; last week's attack on the al-Askariya mosque in Samarra; the recent intensification of terrorism in Afghanistan and Iran's move to further destabilize the country by violently deporting 100,000 Afghan refugees back to the war-torn country - all of these are moves to advance this clear Iranian-Syrian strategy.

And all these moves have taken place against the backdrop of Syria's refashioning of its military in the image of Hizbullah on steroids and Iran's relentless, unopposed progress in its nuclear weapons program.

For their part, both the US and Israel also have a strategic vision. Unfortunately, it is grounded in fantasy.

WASHINGTON and Jerusalem wish to solve all the problems of the region and the world by establishing a Palestinian state in Gaza, Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. While Israel now faces Iranian proxies on two fronts, in their meeting at the White House today US President George W. Bush and Prime Minister EhudOlmert will gush about their support for Palestinian statehood. Creepily echoing LSD king Timothy Leary, they will tune out this reality as they drone on about the opportunities that Gaza's transformation into a base for global jihad afford to the notion that promoting the Fatah terrorist organization's control over Judea and Samaria can make the world a better, safer, happier place.

Today Bush and Olmert will announce their full support for Fatah chief and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas's new government. The US will intensify General Keith Dayton's training and arming of Fatah forces. Israel will give Fatah $700 million. The Europeans and the rest of the international community will give the "moderate, secular" terror group still more money and guns and love. The US will likely also demand that Olmert order the IDF to give Fatah terrorists free reign in Judea and Samaria.

Olmert and Bush claim that by backing Abbas militarily, financially and politically they will be setting up an "alternative Palestine" which will rival Hamas'sjihadist Palestine. As this notion has it, envious of the good fortune of their brethren in Judea and Samaria, Gazans will overthrow Hamas and the course will be set for peace - replete with the ethnic cleansing of Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem of all Jewish presence.

FATAH FORCES barely raised a finger to prevent their defeat in Gaza in spite of the massive quantities of US arms they received and the military training they underwent at the hands of US General Keith Dayton. Bush, Olmert and all proponents of the notion of strengthening Fatah in Judea and Samaria refuse to answer one simple question: Why would a handover of Judea and Samaria to Abbas's Fatah produce a better outcome than Israel's 2005 handover of Gaza to Abbas's Fatah?

They refuse to answer this question because they know full well that the answer is that there is absolutely no reason to believe that the outcome can be better. They know full well that since replacing Yasser Arafat as head of the PA in 2004, Abbas refused to take any effective action against Hamas. They know that he refused to take action to prevent Hamas's rise to power in Gaza and Judea and Samaria. They know that the guns the US transferred to Fatah in Gaza were surrendered to Hamas without a fight last week. They know that the billions of dollars of international and Israeli assistance to Fatah over the past 14 years never were used to advance the cause of peace.

They know that that money was diverted into the pockets of Fatah strongmen and utilized to build terror militias in which Hamas members were invited to serve. They know that Fatah built a terror superstructure in Judea, Samaria and Gaza which enabled operational cooperation between Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror cells.

SO WHY embrace the fantasy that things can be different now, in Judea and Samaria? Rather than provide rational arguments to defend their view that Hamas's takeover of Gaza is an opportunity for peace, proponents of peace fantasies as strategic wisdom explain vacuously that peace is the best alternative to jihad. They whine that those who point out that Israel now borders Iran in Lebanon and Gaza have nothing positive to say.

To meet the growing threat in Gaza, they argue that Europeans, or maybe Egyptians and Jordanians can be deployed at the international border with Egypt to stem the weapons and terror personnel flow into Gaza. To meet the growing threat in Lebanon, Olmert pleads for more UN troops.

Both views ignore the obvious: Gaza has been transformed into an Iranian-sponsored base for global jihad because Egypt has allowed it to be so transformed. Assisted by its Syrian-sponsored Palestinian allies, Hizbullah has rebuilt its arsenals and reasserted its control in southern Lebanon because UN forces in southern Lebanon have done nothing to prevent it from doing so.

No country on earth will volunteer to fight Hamas and its jihadist allies in Gaza. No government on earth will voluntarily deploy its forces to counter Hizbullah and Iran in south Lebanon. This is why - until they fled - European monitors at the Rafah terminal were a joke. This is why Spanish troops in UNIFIL devote their time in Lebanon to teaching villagers Spanish.

SO WHY are Bush and Olmert set to embrace Fatah and Abbas today? Why are they abjectly refusing to come to terms with the strategic reality of the Iranian-Syrian onslaught? Why are they insisting that the establishment of a Palestinian state is their strategic goal and doing everything they can to pretend that their goal has not been repeatedly proven absurd? Well, why should they? As far as Bush is concerned, no American politician has ever paid a price for advancing the cause of peace processes that strengthen terrorists and hostile Arab states at Israel's expense. Bush's predecessor Bill Clinton had Arafat over to visit the White House more often than any other foreign leader and ignored global jihad even when its forces bombed US embassies and warships. And today Clinton receives plaudits for his efforts to bring peace to the Middle East.

By denying that the war against Israel is related to the war in Iraq; by ignoring the strategic links between all the Iranian and Syrian sponsored theaters of war, Bush views gambling with Israel's security as a win-win situation. He will be applauded as a champion of peace and if the chips go down on Israel, well, it won't be Americans being bombed.

OLMERT LOOKS to his left and sees president-elect Shimon Peres. Peres, the architect of the Oslo process which placed Israel's national security in the hands of the PLO, has been rewarded for his role in imperiling his country by his similarly morally challenged political colleagues who just bestowed him with Israel's highest office.

Olmert looks to his left and his sees incoming defense minister EhudBarak. In 2000, then prime minister Barak withdrew Israeli forces from Lebanon, and enabled Iran's assertion of control over southern Lebanon through its Hizbullah proxy. In so doing, Barak set the conditions for last summer's war, and quite likely, for this summer's war.

By offering Arafat Gaza, 95 percent of Judea and Samaria and half of Jerusalem at Camp David, Barak showed such enormous weakness that he all but invited the Palestinian terror war which Arafat began planning the day he rejected Barak's offer.

For his failure, Barak has been rewarded by his Labor Party, which elected him its new chairman on the basis of his vast "experience," and by the media which has embraced him as a "professional" defense minister.

Olmert looks to his right and he sees how the media portrays Likud Chairman BinyaminNetanyahu and former IDF Chief of General Staff Moshe Ya'alon as alarmists for claiming that Israel cannot abide by an Iranian-proxy Hamas state on its border. He sees that Shas and YisraelBeiteinu supported Peres's candidacy as president and have joined their fortunes to Olmert's in a bid to block elections which will bring the Right to power.

ISRAEL HAS arguably never faced a more dangerous strategic environment than it faces today. Yet it is not without good options. It can retake control over the Gaza-Sinai border. It can renew its previously successful tactic of killing Hamas terrorists. It can continue its successful campaign of keeping terrorists down in Judea and Samaria, and it can continue preparing for war in the north. All of these options can be sold to the Left.

But today both Bush and Olmert will reject these options in favor of mindless peace process prattle. They will reject reality as they uphold Abbas as a credible leader and shower him with praise, money and arms. Their political fortunes will be utmost in their minds as they do this. And they will be guaranteeing war that will claim the lives of an unknown number of Israeli civilians and soldiers.

Bush and Olmert should know that when the time for reckoning comes they will not be able to claim, along with Peres and Barak that their hands did not shed this blood. Reality has warned them of their folly. But in their low, dishonest opportunism, they have chosen to ignore reality and amuse themselves with fantasies and photo-ops.

Israel's recent achievements Israel's achievements in the FIRST MONTH of 2007

Despite the second Lebanon war, the divestments, and the boycotts, Israel's economy enjoyed the largest growth in its GNP of any Western country at 8% for the last quarter of 2006. Foreign investment hit aremarkable high of over US$13 billion and the budget deficit was under 1%. Industrial exports, excluding diamonds, rose 11% to $29.3 billion in 2006 with the hi-tech sector leading the surge, according to theManufacturers Association of Israel. Israel's hi-tech industry exported $14.1 billion in goods last year, growing 20% from 2005.What follows is a selection of Israel's achievements in the first monthof 2007:

1. Scientists in Israel found that the brackish water drilled fromunderground desert aquifers hundreds of feet deep could be used to raisewarm-water fish. The geothermal water, less than one-tenth as saline assea water, free of pollutants, and a toasty 98 degrees on average,proves an ideal environment. ****************************2. Israeli-developed designer eyeglasses promise mobile phone and iPodusers a personalized, high-tech video display. Available to US consumersnext year, Lumus-Optical's lightweight and fashionable video eyeglassesfeature a large transparent screen floating in front of the viewer'sface that projects their choice of movie, TV show, or video game.****************************3. When Stephen Hawkings visited Israel recently, he shared his wisdomwith scientists, students, and even the prime minister. But the world'smost renown victim of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or LouGehrig's disease, also learned something - due to the IsraeliAssociation for ALS' advanced work in both embryonic and adult stem cellresearch, as well as its proven track record with neurodegenerativediseases, the Israeli research community is well on its way to finding atreatment for this fatal disease which affects 30,000 Americans.****************************4. Israeli start-up Veterix has developed an innovative new electroniccapsule that sits in the stomach of a cow, sheep, or goat, sending outreal-time information on the health of the herd to the farmer via emailor cellphone. The e-capsule, which also sends out alerts if animals aredistressed, injured, or lost, is now being tested on a herd of cows inthe hopes that the device will lead to tastier and healthier meat andmilk supplies.****************************5. The millions of Skype users worldwide will soon have access to thenewly developed KishKish lie-detector. This free Internet service, basedon voice stress analysis (a technique commonly used in criminalinvestigations), will be able to measure just how truthful that personon the other end of the line really is.****************************6. Beating cardiac tissue has been created in a lab from human embryonicstem cells by researchers at the Rappaport Medical Faculty and theTechnion-Israel Institute of Technology's biomedical engineeringfaculty. The work of Dr. Shulamit Levenberg and Prof. Lior Gepstein hasalso led to the creation of tiny blood vessels within the tissue, makingpossible its implantation in a human heart. ****************************7. Israel's Magal Security Systems is a worldwide leader in computerizedsecurity systems with products used in more than 70 countries around theworld protecting anything from national borders to nuclear facilities,refineries, and airports. The company's latest product, DreamBox, astate-of-the-art security system that includes intelligent video, audioand sensor management, is now being used by a major water authority onthe US East Coast to safeguard the utility's sites. ****************************8. It's common knowledge that dogs have better night vision than humansand a vastly superior sense of smell and hearing. Israel's Bio-SenseTechnologies recently delved further and electronically analysed 350different barks. Finding that dogs of all breeds and sizes bark the samealarm when they sense a threat, the firm has designed the dogbark-reader, a sensor that can pick up a dog's alarm bark and alert thehuman operators. This is just one of a batch of innovative securitysystems to emerge from Israel, which Forbes calls "the go-to country foranti-terrorism technologies."****************************9. Israeli company BioControl Medical sold its first electricalstimulator to treat urinary incontinence to a US company for $50million. Now it is working on CardioFit, which uses electrical nervestimulation to treat congestive heart failure. With nearly five millionAmericans presently affected by heart failure and more than 400,000 newcases diagnosed yearly, the CardioFit is already generating a great dealof excitement as the first device with the potential to halt this deadlydisease.**************************** 10. One year after Norway's Socialist Left Party launched its boycott ofIsrael, the importing of Israeli goods has increased by 15%, the strongest increase in many years, Statistics Norway reports. ***************************************************************

In contrast to the efforts of tiny Israel to make contributions to theworld so as to better mankind, one has to ask what have those who havestrived to eliminate Israel from the face of the earth done other thanto create hate and bloodshed?

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

What Kind of Neighbor Do You Want to Have?

I heard a BBC interview yesterday in which a member of Hamas, a PhD, was comparing what is going on in Gaza to having two children locked in a room with nothing but a small piece of bread - what else could they do but begin to fight over the bread? This is obvious. Eventually they will figure out that they can share. Like the two children in the story, we must give residents of Gaza time to sort things out.

My parents, both Holocaust survivors, were locked in bunkers with five people per sleeping board and not even a crust to share among them. They never did what those two fictional children locked in a room see as the only thing to do. Throughout the millennia, Jews have been locked in ghettos and oppressed with hardly a slice of bread between them, and they too used sticks and stones. They used them to scratch letters on the floor to teach their children to read. They took that crust and found a seed on top that they could plant to grow more wheat. Did you ever hear the old Jewish tale, "Something From Nothing"?

To the Hamas PhD it is obvious that when two children with nothing but a small piece of bread are locked in a room, they will fight. And so the population in Hamastan fights. And when they run out of enemies to fight, they fight each other.

To Jews it is obvious that when two children with nothing but a piece of bread are locked in a room, they will ration the bread until they figure out how to get more bread or get out of the locked room.

To the members of Hamastan, it is obvious that when you are left with the hothouses abandoned by your enemies, you break it apart and loot and destroy it to show your frustration with your situation and erase anything that reminds you of your enemies.

To the Jews it is obvious that when you find parts and broken pieces, you try to fix them or use them to build something useful.

To the members of Hamastan, it is obvious that when you have a small, crowded, barren piece of land with nothing to recommend it, you fight until the world recognizes your plight. You bravely sacrifice lives to destroy the neighboring enemies to make room to expand into their land and their homes.

To Jews it is obvious that if all you have is a small, crowded, barren piece of land, you drain the swamps and make the desert bloom, sometimes sacrificing lives to help build a future.

To the members of Hamstan it is obvious that if you manage to get hold of resources or money, you use them to bolster your leaders and buy weapons to fight your enemies.

To Jews, it is obvious that if you manage to get hold of resources or money, you feed your children, build hospitals and schools, then businesses that can generate more resources and money.

One of us ended up with a country that in 60 years' time rivals countries many-fold its size and many times its age.

One of us ended up with nothing but fear and destruction, and blaming everyone else but themselves for their situation.

Which type of people would you rather have as a neighbor and a partner in this world?

Fatah, Hamas, Hezbollah, Israel, Arabs

Islam: The Power of "No"

By Alan Caruba

Monday, June 18, 2007

Slowly, ever so slowly, it is beginning to dawn on Americans that anything we attempt to do to entice the Middle East into the 21st century is likely to meet with defeat because its Muslim population, held in the grip of brutal men and a brutal theology, remains impervious to the possibility of peace, of freedom, of individual liberty.

What they are especially good at is saying "No." They have been saying no to anything that smacks of modern civilized behavior for a very long time and that resistance has been largely tolerated in the West because (a) their nation may sit atop a lot of oil and/or (b) they are oppressed by their fellow Arabs.

What did Americans know of the Middle East? Not much and mostly gleaned from movies like "Lawrence of Arabia" and whatever films and television shows might depict. Long after WWII, the Middle East did not have a high priority on our attention. Our scant knowledge came from headlines about assassinations and wars. There were historical events like the independence of Israel in 1948 following one of the great horrors of the last century, the Holocaust.

The same United Nations decision to grant sovereignty to the Israelis was extended to the Arabs in the area, granting them territory on which to build a Palestinian nation. The Arabs said no.

Instead, they immediately attacked the new nation and were defeated. Would they now accept terms granting them a nation of their own? No. In 1967 the Egyptians, Syrians, and Jordanians massed their troops and, this time, the Six-Day War was an overwhelming defeat costing them vast tracts of land, the Golan Heights, the Sinai desert, East Jerusalem, the West Bank.

What was their response? The defeated Arab nations convened a conference from which they issued their now-famous Three No’s: No to peace with Israel. No to recognition of Israel. No to any negotiation with Israel.

Israel’s response has been to negotiate at every opportunity. They negotiated with Egypt and returned the Sinai. They negotiated "land for peace" with Yassir Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Front in Oslo, Norway. They were rewarded with the infamous Intifada that escalated into a series of suicide bombings. Finally, the Israelis built a high wall between themselves and the Palestinians in Gaza. These days the wall is breached daily by mortars and rockets that continue to rain down on towns adjacent to that hellish place.

The Israelis withdrew from southern Lebanon, occupied to avoid constant shelling of its northern cities and towns hoping that would bring peace. No. That ultimately led to more shelling and a short war in 2006. The Israeli failure to destroy Hezbollah last year was hailed as a great "victory" by the Arabs.

Earlier the Israeli government had unilaterally withdrawn from the Gaza strip, literally dragging their own citizens who lived there from their homes. Surely that would secure peace? No.

That led to a civil war between Hamas, whose entire political platform is the destruction of Israel, and Fatah, backed by the U.S. in the vain hope that it might negotiate peace—at last—with Israel.

Americans began to pay attention when, in 1979, the "Islamic Revolution" in Iran led to their diplomats being held hostage for 444 days. What kind of nation takes people hostage these days? An Islamic one. And what kind of people commandeers four jet airliners and fly them into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon? Muslims.

The root cause of strife in the Middle East is not Israel, a tiny nation with about six million inhabitants; one that is surrounded by twenty-two Arab nations with 300 million people. Even if Israel did not exist, the root cause of the terrorism and wars is Islam, the "religion of peace" embraced throughout that fetid, backward, cesspool of corruption and oppression.

What the Arabs of the Middle East offer is what Islam offers, only the peace of the grave if nations and men do not bow down to their threats and violence. It is the power of "no."

The global Islamic population is approximately 1,200,000,000 or 20% of the world’s population as compared with the global Jewish population of 14,000,000 or about 0.02% of the world’s population.

If one looks at Nobel Prizes awarded since 1910, one Muslim earned a prize in literature. Among the four awarded a Peace Prize were Egypt’s Mohammed Anwar El-Sadat who was assassinated for negotiating the return of the Sinai and Yasser Arafat who never brought a moment’s peace to the Palestinians. Two Muslims received prizes for medicine. Two Muslims have received a prize for economics. By contrast, the list of Jews receiving Nobel Prizes in all categories takes up several pages.

Which world do you want to live in?

Compare Beirut, Baghdad, Damascus, Khartoum or Mogadishu with any of cities of the West. Part of the world is insane, held in the grip of a "religion" spread by the sword and maintained by insuring that enlightenment of any kind is feared and destroyed. It is a world in which tiny children are taught to embrace murder and death.

Americans cannot understand such people. Americans cannot understand that the Islamic practice of deceit and war is deemed critical to the expansion of this "religion."

America and the West are at a crossroads of history. The terrorism that would return us to a dark age ruled by Islam must be resisted.

We can begin by supporting Israel, by supporting our troops on the front lines of wherever the conflict takes them, and by affirming the power of "Yes", the power that flows from freedom and liberty.

Alan Caruba of The National Anxiety Center maintains an Internet site at www.anxietycenter.com. Caruba writes a weekly column, "Warning Signs", posted on the site and excerpted widely on many others. Alan's new book, "Right Answers: Separating Fact from Fantasy" has been published by Merril Press. In 2003, a collection of his columns was published by Merril Press. Alan can be reached at: letters@canadafreepress.com

*Najib was stabbed in the back by Egyptian Moslem fundamentalists in 1997 because he supported the Peace Process between the Arabs ("Palestinians") and Israelis. Najib was partially paralyzed as a result.

**The Norwegians played an ugly joke on the world by pretending Arafat was a Man of Peace.

There are a mere 12 Million Jews in the entire world yet they have received 178Nobel Prizes.

The Muslims number 1.4 Billion(with a very big "B")... or 117 times the number of Jews! Based upon this 117:1 Muslim-to-Jewish ratio, one might expect the Muslims to have 24,920 Nobel Laureates.They have NINE!and one of them [Arafat] is a murderer (Allahu Akbar, indeed!)

Unless the Swedes and Norwegians start awarding Nobel Prizes for plane hijackings, pizza shop bombings, civilian bus attacks, Jihad suicides/homicides, drive-by shootings, throat-slittings, embassy attacks and other such acts of barbarisms, the embarrassing low level of contribution to the welfare of Civilization and Mankind by the [Arab] Muslim world will continue. The Jewish People, meanwhile, will continue being the Lights Unto All Nations.